TalkTalk, customer service and how to suck at the internet

So this is going to be one of those typical "I have a blog, and so I'm going to complain about things" post right? Well yes, but I'm not normally one to write something like this, however I'm extremely fed up of dealing with it.

TalkTalk provides my parent's internet connection, and to be quite frank they're shockingly bad at it. The connection is often glacially slow (they were unable to use iPlayer until a couple of months ago because TalkTalk had some cap that they'd forgotten about, but thats another story) and once every couple of months the connection will simply die. My parent's home is in a fairly rural area, so I'm not expecting a lighting fast connection, however I do expect at least 100% uptime - it's not the middle of nowhere. Now of course, there'd be no problem if TalkTalk were able to fix this quickly and efficiently but - this is a telecomms company - they can't.

Here's what happened just the other day (and I had a mini Twitter rant about it): The connection is down for an hour or so, so my Dad rings up TalkTalk to get it sorted. He's put on hold for about 30 minutes while they "run some tests". No idea why they can't note down his number, run the tests and call him back - actually that's not true, I do know, TalkTalk is charging something like 30p a minute. Anyway, once he gets put back onto an actual person he's told that there's no problem with the connection at all. We've had no internet connection for about 2 hours by this point - it's definitely NOT WORKING! The call centre then has the cheek to ask for £120 to call out a BT engineer (who they're blaming for the problem) - £120 for a problem with their service, that we're paying for! TalkTalk seem to think that by constantly blaming BT for the problem, they can get away with it. And of course, if you ring BT they'll simply blame TalkTalk...

Anyway, my Dad gives up at this point and phones back later. TalkTalk has no record about the previous phone call... He goes through the whole "running tests" thing for the second time, and is again told that he has to pay for a BT callout (though it costs less this time weirdly). Okay, fine, we'll get a BT engineer out. When can he come? "Oh not until Tuesday" TUESDAY?!? THAT'S 4 DAYS AWAY! 

Luckily for my parents the problem fixed itself on Sunday, so my Dad wasn't left high and dry (he runs his business from home). I'm simply amazed that TalkTalk treated us so badly - the total denial that there was any problem, the cheek of charging £120 for a problem with their service, the complete lack of records (they were asking about our router - a router which was provided by TalkTalk only a few months ago), not being able to send an engineer for 4 days. It's quite incredible that they can get away with this, so that's why I decided to call them on it in this blog.

I emailed my Dad about this post and he came up with a few questions for TalkTalk:

• When phoning to register a fault, why is it necessary to be held on the line for at least 30 minutes each time while they go on and off line for several minutes at a time, "running tests".  i.e. why can't they just note down the fault, allow me to hang up and then call back when they have something to say.  If an engineer is required then that can be arranged then.
• Why does it take 4 days to get an engineer to call from first reporting the fault?
• Do they not have a policy of refunds & compensation while services are discontinued?  Their call centres don't seem to know and suggest calling a different number.
• Their call centre operatives don't seem to care or believe it's TalkTalk's responsibility when a fault occurs.  They seem more concerned at getting my agreement to pay BT's engineers call out fee should the fault be caused within the house than accepting that the problem is at their end.  My contract is with TalkTalk, not BT, so why do they give the impression that it's not TalkTalk's problem.
• Why don't they keep a database of previous calls and a record of caller's equipment etc - every time you need to go through a whole series of questions giving the same answer every time.  For instance, what router am I using?  Well if they looked at their records they would see that it's the one they supplied a few months ago, the last time I had problems with the broadband.

For the record, my parents are probably now going to switch to BT. Good job TalkTalk...

Posted via email from 40_thieves's blog

A Very SnICE Summer

So that's it for another summer, I'm back at home getting bored and wishing I was still in Kandersteg. I loved every moment of it, from working on the glacier to meeting a whole bunch of new friends. I've picked out some of my favourite photos from the whole season

See the full gallery on Posterous

I'm super lucky to have got the opportunity to have done some really fun and rewarding jobs while in this amazing place - working with groups who've never even seen a glacier, getting up to the Frundenjoch, hiking and climbing on my days off, getting a chance to show the other staff how awesome SnICE is, my group 1st Finch visiting and generally just hanging out with some really cool people.

I don't want to sound like an Oscar winner, but a few thanks are in order - firstly to Tom and Matt for giving the job in the first place! To Jemma, Kim and Mick for being the best SnICE team ever, and finally to all the rest of the Summer 2011 Staff for simply being awesome - I'm gonna miss you guys :)

I've got everything crossed hoping that they'll need my help in the winter, for the ski weeks because I loved that so much last winter. And after that, I'm not going back next summer (probably) but I'll be back sometime in the future....

Thanks once again KISC, you've been amazing.

Posted via email from Ali's Kandersteg Adventure

Bouldering in Frutigen

I'm actually back home from Kandersteg now, but catching up on posts :)

On one of my last days at KISC I was hoping to do Balmhorn, the biggest peak in Kandersteg at 3698m, with another one of the staff - Kike from Spain. However, the weather foiled us with really low cloud and pouring rain all day. Unfortunately that means we couldn't do anything outside, and it felt like a waste to sit around all day.

So instead, we decided to go bouldering in Frutigen (the next town down the valley). Kike had been to this amazing place in the basement of a school back in 2009 during his season. I didn't really know what to expect but I really enjoyed myself and would love to go back sometime. 

We ended up going with a couple of the other staff - Big Dave (AU) and Brian (IE). The bouldering room was great, with some really challenging stuff. I started of by following a route that had grips in the shape of the alphabet, going from A to Z. This almost killed my arms as some of the moves were really quite hard. After this we had a crack at the awesome overhang, which I'm normally completely useless at. I'm pretty happy with myself as I managed to get the most of the overhang moves done.

A pretty good way to finish up my summer :)

See the full gallery on Posterous

Posted via email from Ali's Kandersteg Adventure

1st Finch at KISC

I'm actually back home from Kandersteg now, but catching up on posts :)

Towards the end of the season my group, 1st Finchampstead, visited for a couple of weeks which was really awesome. It was great to see some familiar faces out there and to get to show the Scouts the wonders of Kandersteg.

One of the things I was looking forward to all season is a few of the group coming out on a Glacier Workshop with me. I really enjoyed taking them out onto the ice and showing them what I'd been doing all season. Some of the Scouts I've known since they were about 9, and they're really great kids so it was awesome to see them having such a great time. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

The group was staying in the Tower, which is at the end of the campsite. I think it's one of the better places to stay at KISC, especially for bigger groups like mine (we had 53 people staying). It's on the campsite but it has a really nice bunkhouse to stay in and a big communal area with a kitchen. Anyway, I got some pictures of the guys at dinner time (Izzy was really tired!).

See the full gallery on Posterous

Finally I've got some pictures from a hike up in the Gasternal valley (actually it much was a guided Gasternal hike). It was really good fun to take them up and show them around, and to see the real mountains. We also had some fun at Selden, messing around on the cool little bowling alley, trampoline and bouldering rock. 

See the full gallery on Posterous

Posted via email from Ali's Kandersteg Adventure